Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Published On September, 2012
Whither AdWords Express?
Since early in the year when Adwords Express, Google’s simplified Adwords product for SMBs, was upgraded we have heard little about the product. The interface was removed from most dashboards and we have seen no effort to promote it. Today, every Places Dashboard account that I have received this email providing a $100 discount and a …
Google+ Pages For Local – Known Bugs & Quirks After the G+ Local Merge
The initial rollout allowing single location businesses to merge their G+Local page into the fully social G+ Page for local, while very limited, has surfaced very few bugs. The rollout which occurred on August 3rd has been smooth by Google standards for local but any time a company strives to “release early and often” there …
Will Citations Stop Being Effective for Local Optimization in the Future?
Darren Shaw, creator of the Local Citation Finder, recently asked me this great question (I seem to be getting a few of these lately) via email: I’ve heard people talking about how citations might not be a valuable ranking factor in the future. What do you think? Will they stop being effective for local optimization …
MapMaker Bots and What They Do
Google MapMaker has become a tremendous resource for cleaning up listings in G+ Local. While it can be incredibly confusing, it provides a window into the complete cluster data that Google has for a given listing, provides a detailed history of activities vis a vis that listing and allows for direct editing of it. The …
Google Plus Now Allows Videos on Merged G+ Pages for Local
The ability to upload videos to your G+ Local listing via the Places Dashboard has long been broken and the feature was missing on the merged G+ Pages for Local. I am not quite sure when this happened but you now can upload videos if you have a (re)verified G+Page for Local. As reader Julie Larson …
Can a Citation Campaign Cause a Drop in Google Local Rankings?
A customer of ours sent us a question about citations. They have been building citations recently and cleaning up NAP inconsistencies. But they have seen a significant drop in rankings. I’ve never heard of ‘good’ citation building having a negative effect on rankings – have you? Also what’s your theory on speed of building citations …
Google on Reviews: Asking for them is OK, Soliciting them is BAD
What is the difference between asking for reviews and soliciting them? It seems that a number of SMBS have discovered that one leads to jail time. Google has been throwing out reviews left and right of late. This is not a bug but the outcome of a newly aggressive review spam filter. The forums were …
Google Testing Lead Generation System for New Car Sales
For the past month and half Google has been testing a new local car lead generation product in the San Francisco market. The product, officially called Google Comparison Ads for Autos, allows a consumer to anonymously request quotes on specific in stock inventory from dealers within a certain distance of their search. According to Brian …
Google+ Rolling Out Vanity URLs
Google has announced that they are testing the rollout of vanity URLs for Google Plus: Custom URLs for profiles and pages: a first stepYour Google+ profile is a place for you to share your passions with the millions of people who come to Google each day. Whether you’re a clothing brand showing off your latest …
Google+ Business Pages: To Merge Or Not to Merge, That is the Question
The recent rollout of the ability to merge a G+ Business page and a G+ Local page was a significant sign post on Google’s way to integrating local into social. To Google’s credit the product and process were simple and elegant. The design was more than a notch above previous efforts in local and it …
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